After receiving piano lessons as a youth, MacDowell was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire when his family moved to France in 1877. He then attended the Hochschule Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany where he studied piano and composition under Carl Heymann. MacDowell married in 1884 and remained in Germany until 1888 when financial difficulties forced him to return to America. Settling in Boston, he continued to compose until 1896 when he was appointed the first professor of music at Columbia University. The next two years were very productive for MacDowell and saw the publication of perhaps his most famous piece, Woodland Sketches (1896). The MacDowells purchased a farm in New Hampshire in 1896 and later established an artists' colony which is still functioning today. In 1904, MacDowell became one of the first seven people elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Later that year, he was involved in an accident with a cab that left him invalided. Suffering from a debilitating nervous disorder, his mental capacity began to decline and he ran into financial problems which were partly alleviated by the fund raising of the Mendelssohn Glee Club. MacDowell produced numerous piano works and symphonic poems in addition to his piano sonatas. Among the best-known of his works are Hamlet and Ophelia (1885), Lancelot and Elaine (1888), Second Piano Concerto in D Minor (1889), Indian Suite (1892), Sea Pieces (1898), Fireside Tales (1902) and New England Idylls (1902). |
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